Misunderstandings
by DFM
Summary: Summary: Two misunderstandings and a happy ending.


Title: Misunderstandings  
  
Author: Devin  
  
Website: http://franny122004.tripod.com/  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Category: SR  
  
Keywords: MSR, AU, Will fic  
  
Spoilers: Existence (kinda, sorta, not really)  
  
Summary: Two misunderstandings and a happy ending.  
  
Disclaimer: I'm not adding a disclaimer. I like the idea of being sued by David Duchovny. You can't get any money from a high school girl anyway. *Hears Fox Executives screaming* Okay, fine, don't yell. The X-Files and its characters belong to CC, Fox, etc. etc. etc.  
  
Author's Note: Thanks so much Cathey for betaing this for me!  
  
If it were ever possible to hate an inanimate object, the phone would be the most hated by any mother with a little baby. Scully had just gotten Will to go to sleep, when it began to ring. Of course this caused Will to wake with loud cries of indignation. Scully picked Will out of the crib that she had just put him in, and soothingly rubbed his back while walking down the hall to get the phone.  
  
"It's okay baby. Shhh, it's okay." She murmured before picking up the phone. "Hello?" she asked trying to keep the anger out of her voice.  
  
"Well, hello to you too, lil sis. Your enthusiasm to speak to your older brother is overwhelming, truly."  
  
"This had better be good, Bill. You woke Will up and now it'll take me an hour to get him back to sleep."  
  
Bill let out a snort of laughter, apparently having no sympathy for his sister's situation. "Well, don't try and put him down. I'm on my way over to see you and the little munchkin."  
  
Shock was just one of the emotions that crossed her face due to this statement. "You're in town?"  
  
Totally oblivious to her plight he continued, "Yup, we'll be over in fifteen minutes."  
  
"Bill-" but it was no use, he'd already hung up. "Great," she muttered and then giving a falsely bright smile to Will she said, "Hey, what do you say we call daddy?" Will gurgled up at her happily and she couldn't help but laugh. "I'll take that as a yes."  
  
One push of #1 on speed-dial later, another voice came over the phone. "Mulder."  
  
"Mulder, it's me," she said falling into their familiar pattern.  
  
"Hey, Scully what's up? Did you finally get his temperature down?"  
  
"Yeah, yeah," she said dismissively. "You know how you were going to come over in half an hour?"  
  
She could almost see his knit eyebrows as he said, "yeah."  
  
"Well you can't anymore."  
  
"Okay," the hurt in his voice was so palpable that she regretted the clipped response iimmediately. She should have known better, things had been far too tense during the last two weeks.  
  
Two Weeks Earlier  
  
Scully had to double check the number on the front of her door when she realized that the lovely aroma that could be smelled all through the hallway of someone cooking something delicious was coming from behind the door she was standing in front of.  
  
Careful not to shift Will too much, he had fallen asleep in the car and was now resting his head on her shoulder; she opened the door as quietly as possible. She put Will down in the playpen set up in the living room. She walked past the kitchen, not really looking in it, as she went to check her email and said in a voice somewhere between amusement and annoyance, "Mom I told you to go home. You've been here almost all week."  
  
"Mom huh? That's an interesting pet name," a voice that was definitely not her mother's yelled in response from the kitchen. When he heard his father's voice, Will's eyes practically snapped open and he immediately began blabbering in baby gibberish.  
  
Sighing Scully went back over to the now fidgeting baby. "Hey baby boy," she cooed as she picked him up, "I thought you were down for the count but daddy woke you up didn't he? Ah my poor little baby, let's see if daddy's willing to hold you for a little while huh?" Will's only response was to gurgle back while little spit bubbles came out of his mouth; she took this as a sign of agreement. "Your son wants a word with you," she said and handed Will over to Mulder.  
  
"Hey buddy!"   
  
For ten minutes it was like the rest of the world disappeared. Father and son gabbed on for a while, neither really knowing what the other was saying, until the littler of the two conked out from complete exhaustion.  
  
After Will was put to bed, for the second time that night no less, Mulder went to the living room to find Scully. When he found her she was curled up on the couch staring at the TV but probably not really seeing what was on. She flipped past several channels that were showing the same episode of M*A*S*H, infomercials about a pancake flipper, or a court TV show.  
  
"Will's asleep."  
  
Scully turned around and smiled up at him. "Thanks."  
  
"You hungry?"  
  
"Yeah," she moved to stand up but he stopped her from moving.  
  
"I'll get it."  
  
'Oh no,' she thought, 'he's up to something.' When he came back though she smiled thanks at him and didn't make a comment.  
  
After they sat eating in companionable silence for a little while, Mulder finally broached the subject that had been bothering him. "You've been exhausted lately." She went to protest but he didn't let her get that far. "I know you have. Taking care of Will all the time is wearing you out."  
  
This time she did protest. "You and mom are over here all the time."  
  
"That doesn't exactly cover all the times he wakes up in the middle of the night, does it?"  
  
"I can handle it."  
  
"But what if you didn't have to?" he suggested tentatively.  
  
"Meaning?"  
  
Deciding to stop this 'beating around the bush' tactic they were both using, he went straight in for the kill. "What if I moved in?"  
  
The range of emotions Scully went through at that one simple statement was too complicated to catalog, but disbelief was the victor. "If you want to come over to see Will more often, you can. Look I'm really tired, I'll see you later, okay?"  
  
Present  
  
"You can still come over," she said quickly trying to smooth over at least some of the hurt. "Just give it enough time for Bill to be out of here. Like an hour, I'll call you if it's going to be more but it shouldn't be." Okay, now she was rambling, she had to stop that. So after taking a deep breath they conversed in a calmer manner and then, when there was a knock on the door, they hung up.  
  
She opened the door to find Bill standing there with an almost-proud smile on his face and on his right stood a very handsome, 40-something, blonde man.  
  
Aaron.  
  
The smug bastard Bill had set her up with about a week before she and Mulder had... gone to the next level. They had gone on one disastrous date, had nothing to talk about, he'd flirted with every woman in the restaurant who'd looked remotely alive, and then he'd tried to get into her pants.  
  
"Hey, Bill." She smiled at her brother and gave him a hug. Before releasing him from the hug she whispered to him, "What is he doing here?"  
  
Apparently Bill missed the threatening tone in which she said this, because his smile never wavered, in fact he look even prouder of himself. "I thought you guys would like to talk."  
  
"About what exactly?" now she wasn't even bothering to hide the fact that she didn't want Aaron here.  
  
"About Will, of course." She must have looked confused because he continued. "Oh come on Dana, I can do the math. You guys went out almost exactly 9 months to the day Will was born. Don't you think he should know?"  
  
"Bill..." And that's when he should have been set straight but apparently she wasn't the only one who had a problem with the suggested topic.  
  
"What the hell, Bill?" Aaron practically screamed, not having been informed of what the agenda entailed before being brought here. "What kind of a set up is this?" He then turned on Scully. "You're not getting one cent out of me, how do I know that I'm the father?"  
  
Either Aaron didn't remember that they hadn't even slept together or he didn't pass Biology 101. "Now just a minute..." Scully went to protest, again trying to cut this conversation off before it went any farther, but was again interrupted.  
  
Bill stepped in front of her taking his signature protective brother stance. "What exactly are you implying you dip shit? My sister's not a whore! You better apologize and take some responsibility..."  
  
And the conversation went on pretty much like that for several minutes, with Scully trying to break in several times. At one point the noise got to be too much for Will because he let out a wail. Even that didn't seem to break through the argument that the two men had gotten themselves into, so Scully left the living room to go calm Will down and hoped that she wouldn't find either dead when she came back.  
  
Mulder was walking up the hallway to Scully's apartment when he heard two men's voices screaming at each other and was surprised when he realized that the voices were emanating from her apartment. He recognized Bill Scully's voice but not the other. 'Sounds like another lovely visit from her brother,' he thought sardonically.  
  
Mulder walked in just as Bill said, "You are going to marry my sister, you bastard, and take care of that baby you helped create!" Bill seemed to notice Mulder all of a sudden. "Hell even he," he jabbed a finger in Mulder's direction, "has been there for her more than you have."  
  
"Yeah, well then he can marry her because I'm not!"  
  
Mulder was starting to get some of what they were arguing about, but was more worried about the fact that Will was crying up a storm. "Shut up!" he yelled and had both of their attention now. "I don't know what you guys think you're doing here, but *my* son does not seem to appreciate it, and I'm sure his mother doesn't either. So I suggest that you both leave."  
  
Bill looked stunned while Aaron looked smug at this declaration, but regardless of what they looked like, they both got the door slammed in their face.  
  
Mulder walked to the back of the apartment where Scully's room was and found her pacing back and forth, calming Will down. "Shh, baby boy. They're gone now. Daddy got the loud men to go away. It's okay." Her gentle words, mixed with the way she was softly rubbing his back soothed him pretty quickly now that it was fairly quiet.  
  
She set him down in his playpen to play with some cloth blocks, with which he seemed more interested in eating than actually building anything, and motioned for Mulder to follow her out of the room and into the hallway.  
  
She looked slightly awkward but she gave him a small smile. "Thank you. They weren't listening to me and I didn't think that, short of shooting one of them, I would be able to get rid of them."  
  
"Who was that guy anyway?"  
  
"Aaron... I don't even remember his last name. Bill set me up on a blind date with him, he was a jerk, and I never saw him again until today."  
  
He looked into her eyes trying to figure out if there was more to that story than she was saying but there didn't seem to be so he didn't press it. There was something else they had to talk about anyway. "About our conversation a couple weeks ago..."  
  
Her body suddenly went rigid, "Look Mulder, I know you want to be around Will as much as possible. I understand that, really. But I am not just going to..."  
  
Mulder stopped her almost immediately. "You think this is all about Will," he said in awe. He couldn't believe that's what she thought; he was definitely going to have to work on this. He smiled and leaned over, planting a light kiss on her lips which gave away his true ambitions.  
  
It seemed that he had some very persuasive arguments because ten minutes later she said, "Okay but the magazines and videos that aren't yours are never making it through that door."  
  
1 Week Later  
  
Mulder parked in front of Scully's apartment building with the last of the boxes from his apartment in his trunk and Will in the back seat. As he was taking the carrier out of the car, Will noticed something to his right and let out a squeal of joy. Mulder turned to see a man sitting with a box full of kittens in front of him. He looked between his son's delighted face and the kittens that were all trying to get out of the box.  
  
"Will, your mom is going to kill me," he stated before walking over to the box.  
  
Scully looked down at the kitten that Mulder had just placed on the couch after quickly explaining the situation.  
  
"It figures that you would get one with a UFO pattern on its back," was her only comment before reaching over and scratching the cat behind the ears.  
  
So, that's how Mulder, Scully, William, and Spooky wound up living together in one tiny apartment.  
  
The End  
  
Required Elements  
  
*Takes place right after Season 8 (no Season 9)  
  
*Fight with Bill about Will's father  
  
*Discussion about getting rid of porn magazines  
  
*Rated PG-13 or Higher  
  
*A kitten/puppy named Spooky  
  
*Discussion (maybe a fight) about moving in together 


End file.
